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Picture of the Day
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Sunday May 22, 2022 subscribe |
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it's so hard to make a lasting mark. big events, profound philosophies, legendary people are all fragile as the paper bearing their names, the deeds and dates inevitably fade. alexandria reduced to ash, revolutionaries warm their hands over the flames of burning artifacts. "who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." history is written by the winners, but no victory is permanent. the past is forever contested and time itself gets the last laugh. wood, stone, or bronze, no likeness lasts. just ask ozymandias. monuments fall, disintegrate in rain, earthquake, or at the hands of those who have a stake in having the past revised or erased. Tecumseh was a hero born in what later became ohio and my father-in-law bill's commissioned chainsaw carving tribute to him is admirable in itself plus it's poignant how it's already being reclaimed by nature, a refuge for birds that nest in its guts, like prometheus having his liver pecked out, dead tree resurrected as story, accidental symbol of decay and rebirth. the hopewell mounds are like giant fingerprints pressed into the earth, ridges and whorls high and wide, "drawn" with an eye to the sky, celestially aligned, eight sites scattered across the state, each a unique shape, connected by imaginary lines, built thousands of years ago, no one knows by whom or why. (i learn this in a museum while outside the woodchucks abide.) |
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